“If you say that again, Cil, I’ll get up and kick you,” growled Frank. “Every fellow isn’t such a blackguard as you.”
“Oh no,” laughed Cyril, “especially not dear brother Frank. There, I’m off.”
“You’re a beauty, Cil!” growled Frank, and he lit a fresh cigar. “Share! Go halves with me! Ha, ha, ha! I dare say he would. How people do believe in stories of the gold mines. I wonder whether anything is to be made out of that poet fool.”
“Want to talk to me, father?” said Cyril, entering the room where his mother lay upon the couch, with a terrible look of anxiety upon her pallid face. “Oh, let’s see; will my smoking worry you, mamma?”
“Always so thoughtful for me,” said the fond mother to herself. Then aloud—
“I don’t mind it, Cyril, but I don’t think your father—”
She stopped short, for the Rector interrupted her, sternly.
“Is an invalid lady’s room a suitable place for smoking pipes, Cyril?”
“Don’t see that it matters what the place is so long as the invalid don’t mind. But there, don’t make a bother about it,” he cried, tapping the burning tobacco out on to the hob; “I can wait until I go down again.”
“Shall we go down, papa?” said Julia, rising with Cynthia from where they sat in the window.